Opinion | Features

Enough with the cooking shows already says media trading director Sam Tedesco. The market saturation is not doing anything positive for the ratings.
Like most members of the Australian TV viewing audience, I love a good cooking show. Right now, though, I need a break from high-pressure personality-driven food formats.

In this opinion piece Kevin Fitzsimons argues SBS documentary Go Back to Where You Came From demonstrates how people will accept ideas more readily when they are shown them.
‘People don’t do conceptual,’ was one of the best pieces of advice I received early on in my marketing career.
It took a while for me to grasp the value of the advice and even longer to apply it.

Australia's biggest supermarket is struggling. Steve Jones spoke to industry experts about how Woolworths' marketing strategy has faltered, and whether the brand can revive its fortunes.
When Woolworths chief executive Grant O’Brien fell on his sword last month after another disappointing set of quarterly figures, it surprised no one.
Without a chief marketer following the abrupt dismissal of Tony Phillips – and with several other high profile executives exiting stage left in recent months – it was just another in a long line of senior level departures at the embattled supermarket.

Media commentators not condemning the booing of AFL star Adam Goodes are effectively condoning bullying argues Adam Ferrier.
I have always admired Adam Goodes. Dual Brownlow medallist, premiership player, Australian of the Year, continued good work for indigenous people. He certainly deserves respect. Don’t know if I like him or not though, never met the guy.
However, Alan Jones commented on the issue recently and said the reason Goodes is getting booed is just that, ‘Because they just don’t like the fellow’.
What a damaging thing to say, and surely it’s not as simple as that?

After recently switching to ING Direct Ian Sizer says the current ad campaign for the online bank is seriously making him consider switching back.
When you get an ad appearing every single ad break it can be irritating. Some ads though go way beyond irritating and become so infuriating it can totally bugger up your evening.
That’s what happened to me last weekend when my viewing was interrupted on a regular basis by the latest offering from ING Direct.

While storytelling has become one of adland's biggest buzzwords Rob Lowe argues marketers are failing to make the necessary emotional connections.
I remember first hearing people talk about ‘storytelling’ a few years ago. I never quite understood it then and I still don’t fully understand the term now.
In fact, like many others, I think it’s overused marketing jazz.

Ahead of the launch of Seven's new reality format Restaurant Revolution tonightAngely Grecia crunches the numbers to see what sort of a buzz the show is creating on Twitter.
The Restaurant Revolution - the new foodie reality TV-show that sees ordinary Aussies designing and running their own pop-up restaurant to win a grand prize of $200,000 - is alive and well on social media.

Despite all the hype the news dinosaurs still dominate the plains of online news in Australia argues The New Daily editorial director Bruce Guthrie in an address to the Rural Press Club.
One way or another, as a journalist and editor, I’ve had a front-row seat at the migration of news from print to online over the past 20 years. And whenever I reflect on that sometimes painful, often clumsy process I am reminded of the joke about the man who walks into a bar with a frog sitting on his head.

In this opinion piece Mumbrella's Alex Hayes argues Lexus' new Heartbeat Car stunt will not raise the pulses of ordinary punters.
I have to admit the new 'world first' Lexus 'Heatbeat Car' leaves me cold.
It comes across as technology for technology's sake - they could have achieved the same results with CGI.

In this guest post, Shabaz Hussain wonders what a posh British drink’s surprise social media win at Wimbledon says about sports sponsorship for brands.
According to a recent Brand Intelligence Report from Amobee the brand most associated with The Championships at Wimbledon in 2015 across social and digital is Pimm’s – a traditional cocktail drink that spectators enjoy at the event.
What makes this more interesting is that fact that they were not an official sponsor of The Championships.

With more than $200m of business in play in Australia due to global pitches. But David Angell asks whether swapping partners will achieve much for these multinationals.
Do you watch soap operas? Of course you don’t, you’re all busy executives with crippling workloads.
But I bet most of you can remember them from younger days.

While some of the figures in the latest RECMA rankings are questionable Nic Christensen argues they still provide an interesting insight on the state of the media industry.
There's something about the RECMA numbers that just does not make sense. But when you ask a bunch of agencies to tell you how much they spend every year you're likely to get some very interesting results.
But despite the inconsistencies they are still the best map of media agencyland, are provide insights around the challenges of staff churn, the rise of programmatic and the broader challenge of falling client spend which are actually quite telling.

The way that blogger and influencer outreach is currently being executed is fast becoming unsustainable, and the industry should be worried argues Louisa Claire
When bloggers began sharing the brands they loved and used in their everyday lives, readers found their endorsement authentic and relatable; it came from someone “just like them”. Research found such backing from “real people” was more successful in swaying purchasing decisions than celebrity endorsements, and marketers opened their eyes to a massive opportunity to leverage bloggers’ voices.
The concept of blogger outreach was born.

It’s time for a new New Wave in the film world

Government funding bodies are lazy and decadent, says industry veteran Michael Thornhill but in a piece that first appeared in Encore, Ed Gibbs begs to differ.

I vividly remember the time I first saw Animal Kingdom, David Michod’s breathtaking labour-of-love feature debut. The press screening was half empty, despite the film winning the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance just months earlier, in 2010. Yet its superb performances, stylistic flourishes and overall polish left me speechless. Could this really be a feature debut, an Australian one at that, I wondered, almost out loud? It seemed too good to be true.

I had a similar response when viewing Justin Kurzel’s Snowtown the following year and, just a few weeks ago, Kim Mordaunt’s beautiful feature, The Rocket. Like Warwick Thornton’s Cannes-winning Samson and Delilah before it, all these films point to a screen agency culture backing a fresh breed of film-makers (albeit ones well honed, in their thirties and forties).

The world has duly taken note.

I was puzzled, then, at last month’s Australian Directors Guild Awards dinner, to hear industry veteran Michael Thornhill sound off on the “sickness” that prevails in modern cinematic funding bodies. The former head of Screen NSW, a respected writer, director and producer in his own right (and a former critic to boot), claimed that TV writers are being hired to assess cinematic projects, and it shows. The room awkwardly applauded. Many were incensed.

When I spoke to Thornhill last week, he stood by what he said (although he refused to comment further on his blatant attack on Packed to the Rafters and A Place to Call Home creator Bevan Lee). He claimed Australia is “a philistine culture”, where “art and aesthetics and ideas” are not celebrated as they should be. He was dismissive of Animal Kingdom as merely “a vehicle for its director” and Jacki Weaver to flourish. He hadn’t even bothered to see Snowtown. Australia, he said, is making “DVD movies”, not cinematic ones.

In a modern, multi-platform industry, where fragmented markets offer challenges and opportunities in their own right, the wistful days of the New Wave – where the likes of Peter Weir, Bruce Beresford and Phillip Noyce flourished (as did Thornhill, to some extent) – are long gone. The world has changed. And so must its creatives.

I am unaware of the knock-backs Thornhill has had in recent years. He wouldn’t tell me, although he did brand the industry as “youth-orientated” and ageist. One of his best-known films, though, The FJ Holden, has been reborn on DVD, courtesy of Umbrella Entertainment.

Government-funded agencies exist for a very good reason. Unlike, say the US, we have the luxury of having them to ensure a local film industry can exist, even flourish. What we do need is to foster young blood – in writing, directing and producing – with more initiatives like Screen Australia’s Springboard and its Opening Shot scheme with the ABC. If there’s a “sickness” affecting the industry, it’s the lack of emerging voices coming through, particularly those aged 25 and under. Film and television crossed over long ago (take a bow, HBO). It’s high time we fostered a new New Wave.

Ed Gibbs is a film critic, journalist, broadcaster and curator based in Sydney.

This story first appeared in the weekly edition of Encore available for iPad and Android tablets. Visit encore.com.au for a preview of the app or click below to download.

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